4 rescued and 2 dead in crash of private Russian jet in Afghanistan, the Taliban say

ISLAMABAD (AP) — Four people have been rescued and two died following the crash of a private Russian jet carrying six over the weekend in Afghanistan, the Taliban said on Monday.

The crash on Saturday took place in a mountainous area in Badakhshan province, some 250 kilometers (155 miles) northeast of Afghanistan’s capital, Kabul. Rescue teams were dispatched to the remote rural area that is home to only several thousand people.

On Monday, the chief Taliban spokesman, Zabihullah Mujahid, posted videos on X, previously known as Twitter, showing the four rescued crew members. He said they were given first aid and were being transferred from Badakhshan to Kabul. He said the four are in good health.

Local authorities in Badakhshan said the bodies of the two killed in the crash will be recovered from the site. The Taliban have not identified any of the six victims of the crash. The Taliban’s Transportation and Civil Aviation Ministry said in an online statement the plane was found in the district of Kuf Ab district, near the Aruz Koh mountain.

On Sunday, Abdul Wahid Rayan, a spokesman for the Taliban’s Information and Culture Ministry, blamed an “engine problem” for the crash, without elaborating.

In Moscow, Russian civil aviation authorities said a 1978 Dassault Falcon 10 went missing with four crew members and two passengers. The Russian-registered aircraft “stopped communicating and disappeared from radar screens,” authorities said. It described the flight as starting from Thailand’s U-Tapao–Rayong–Pattaya International Airport.

The plane had been operating as a charter ambulance flight on a route from Gaya, India, to Tashkent, Uzbekistan, and on to Zhukovsky International Airport in Moscow.

Russian officials said the